‘Gay Lives Matter’ and the Future of Islam

We’ve reached a high point of absurdity when pointing out human rights abuses is “demonization.”

Earlier this month, on the campus of DePaul University, James Kirchick, a leading gay activist was planning tospeak on the abuse of gay individuals in Islamic countries. His presentation was called “Dictatorships and Radical Islam: The Enemies of Gay Rights.” One should think there wouldn’t be an issue with such a talk, as one doesn’t have to look far to find examples of Islamic regimes that treat homosexuality as a capital crime.

Except for one major problem. Another student group tried to shut him down. You see, his crime was to point out the atrocities of radical Islam’s violence towards gays and other sexual minorities, and in the oppression hierarchy on college campuses, such views are taboo. In particular, he was denied the opportunity to display a poster with the slogan “Gay Lives Matter.” The offended organization, DePaul Students for Justice in Palestine, categorized Kirchick as a “white Zionist”(as if that matters). Further, they declared “not in our fucking name will you continue to demonize Islam and Muslims and ignore the radical Christian right.” As if the Christian right is beheading people and throwing gays off of buildings. We’ve reached a high point of absurdity when pointing out human rights abuses is “demonization.”

Even though this incident is certainly bizarre and outrageous, it is not unique. All across far left circles, Islam has ascended to the top of the Oppression Olympics to the very point that pointing out objective reality is no longer tolerated. Even in my own social group of psychotherapists specializing in sexuality and relationship issues, I posted on a private Facebook group about the role of radical Islam in creating the horrific conditions of the extermination of homosexuals in Chechnya, and instead of lively intellectual discourse, I was met with hostile insinuations about my attitudes towards Islam, mainly by gay psychotherapists.

My intent in this essay is not to detail every example of social justice warrior nonsense across the country. Rather I want to bring attention to a growing source of tension between and within gay and Islamic groups that is coming to a head and may not be readily resolved, and how this represents a microcosm of a larger cultural struggle. Indeed, it is often gay individuals that are most strident in pointing out the abuses of Islam. Alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos certainly comes to mind, but there are many more examples, including British columnist Douglas Murray, an outspoken critic of European immigration policies, whose book The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam was just released. Numerous articles prior to the recent French election identified gay French men as a potential voting bloc for Marine Le Pen. One piece in the Spectator even suggested that Parisian gays supported Le Pen at higher rates than heterosexuals.

Certainly not all in the LGBT community have taken a stand in decrying the homophobic, authoritarian stance of Islam (many haven’t), which points to perhaps a growing divide within these communities. This disagreement openly bares the striking contrast between two basic yet essential human needs—survival and acceptance—setting it as a microcosm of the cultural conflicts imposed by mass immigration.

Those gay individuals speaking out against radical Islam, while outraged about human rights abuses abroad, are also motivated by self-preservation. A key thesis of their argument is that bringing in more people from a homophobic culture into the West changes the culture. So in some not-too distant future Western culture too may shift from acceptance and inclusion into persecution and torture. This kind of thinking takes on a long-view approach, factoring future possibilities into present-day decisions.

On the other hand, we can only form two conclusions about those who defend radical Islam. Either they take the threat of persecution and annihilation present in many Islamic-majority countries seriously, but instead choose to privilege in-group acceptance out of fear of expulsion by appearing racist, or they don’t take the threat of Islamic persecution of homosexuals seriously at all.

Let’s go through each of these in turn. In the first scenario, they are making a conscious decision to ignore an existential threat, which can only be done if that threat feels vague and remote, no matter how much peer pressure is exerted. The threat of in-group expulsion feels much more immediate and concrete, while radical Islamic persecution feels as real as a video game plotline. This brings us to the second option—not taking the threat seriously. I think this is a very plausible explanation, since one of the core tenets of psychology is that people have difficulty truly understanding an issue unless they have real-life experience to draw upon. In many ways, this may be an unintended consequence of Western civilization, since (relative) prosperity has removed individuals from contact with basic life and death issues. Certainly, there are many poor and sick individuals struggling with daily matters of survival, but we don’t have to look much further than elite Ivy League universities to see they are not the individuals most likely to engage in politically correct activism. When individuals have time to ruminate over such supposed outrages as ‘manspreading’ and ‘mansplaining,’ as a society we have reached the point of seeking out problems, even if they must be manufactured, rather than escaping from real-life oppressions.

Interestingly, gay cultural critic Bruce Bawer, in his book The Victims’ Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind, details a historical divide on college campuses between Gay Studies and the emerging Queer Studies. While the first is classical and modernist in nature, focusing on the gay experience as it relates to the rest of society, the latter is Marxist and postmodernist, attempting to deconstruct the very bedrock of Western civilization. The first attempts to situate gays within a classical tradition, the second seeks to completely undermine it. Other tomes, more academic in nature, have also attempted to examine this divide, such as LGBT Studies and Queer Theory: New Conflicts, Collaborations, and Contested Terrain. The point is that this tension between preservation and deconstruction permeates divisions within academia on LGBT issues just as it extends to fractures in belief systems between self-preservation and in-group acceptance, as detailed above. Indeed, I would argue, that the very attempt at deconstructing civilization is so abstract and far removed from daily concerns of living, that the most important reality becomes adherence to ideology, rather than dealing with real-life threats. This is perhaps why it is mainly those individuals with enough privilege to have the luxury to dally with postmodern philosophy that are also most active in Far Left agitprop.

In many ways then, the controversies surrounding radical Islam and mass migration at their core come down to differing understandings of reality, one that is either centered on daily experiences of living or one based on abstract thought experiments. The first sees the greatest threat to its reality as annihilation, the second sees it as in-group expulsion for deviating from accepted thought. Let’s all hope that there are enough voices in the first group that allow the second group to continue existing in their theoretical dream-state. Otherwise, it may be too late if and when they are forced to wake up.

Michael Aaron is a cultural analyst and NYC-based psychotherapist, specializing in sexuality and relationship issues. His work can be found on Quillette and Psychology Today, as well as his website www.drmichaelaaronnyc.com.

MORE IN CULTURE

Hide 37 comments

37 Responses to ‘Gay Lives Matter’ and the Future of Islam

This comes as no surprise to people who had expected this for several years.

Victim hiearchies evolve and the New Year’s Eve mass molestation in Cologne vis a vis political and media reaction was a big elephant in the proverbial mine that women as a group, and gays as adjunct, were going to play second and third fiddles to the big new victims.

Reality eventually will catch up. And it will be interesting the kinds of rationales that the Queer Studies people will produce.

“A key thesis of their argument is that bringing in more people from a homophobic culture into the West changes the culture.”

You mean an increase in the number of muslims and their integration into western society may be a long term threat to the dominance of LGBT politics? That’s shocking, shocking I say! Something must be done!

More seriously, the political agenda of anti-Russian, pro-Israel, anti-Muslim types like James Kirchick, tends to be to promote war and division, so I’m not surprised genuine left-wing activists will oppose them on campus.

Very rarely do you come across an article that touches on everything that has been going through your mind for over a year. I am a member of the LGBT community who has studied Arabic, spent lots of time in the Middle East, and works a lot with both the Muslim and the LGBT community. The questions posed in this article are things that we should all be asking right now. These tensions are indeed developing in our communities. I myself have noticed a much more conservative lean in my own attitudes towards these issues, and I am surprised that more LGBT activists do not at least take the many concerns on the right seriously. This article is great food for thought!

“Indeed, I would argue, that the very attempt at deconstructing civilization is so abstract and far removed from daily concerns of living, that the most important reality becomes adherence to ideology, rather than dealing with real-life threats. This is perhaps why it is mainly those individuals with enough privilege to have the luxury to dally with postmodern philosophy that are also most active in Far Left agitprop.”

As succinct a description of the current madness as I have ever seen. Home run!!

Michael Aaron writes that “another student group tried to shut him down…In particular, he was denied the opportunity to display a poster with the slogan ‘Gay Lives Matter.’ The offended organization, DePaul Students for Justice in Palestine, categorized Kirchick as a white Zionist’ (as if that matters).”

But Mr. Aaron’s own link describes “Gay Lives Matter” poster controversy in a different way:

“As for the ‘Gay Lives Matter’ posters, Amy Mynaugh, director of the Office of Student Involvement at the Catholic university, denied them on the grounds that ‘using the same look/brand as BLM [Black Lives Matter] pits two marginalized groups against each other…It doesn’t appear that Turning Point [sponsor of the Kirchick speech] has any connection to the Black Lives Matter movement and this seems to simply be co-opting another movement’s approach,’ she added…Last fall, the university also refused to allow the DePaul College Republicans from posting ‘Unborn Lives Matter’ posters as well.”

Thus, the pressure on DePaul to ban the “Gay Lives Matter” poster appears to be coming from Black Lives Matter.

Michael Aaron argues that affluence is a soil in which postmodernism grows well.

Point taken.

But his point is not taken far enough by him and perhaps the comfort affluence putatively gives is the culprit.

The point ignored and omitted is this: spoiled brats are in dire need of correction. And they, as well as their audience, know it. Their ire at the Christian West is its institutional leaders’ failure to indict their tantrum and instead to accept it.

On some basic level, the postmodernist gets that this is a failure to love him and only a move to placate him by giving his pestilence a place in the sun through making excuse for his outrage and treating it as fair comment.

Such an approach forgets that man is a rational animal and, therefore, that he knows things. Among these things he knows is that he lives in relation to his fellow man and that this will entail responsibility on his part.

As regards postmodern outrage over condemnation of homosexual acts as disordered because irrational, the one who gives it voice knows on some basic level that he is railing against the truth. Anyone who, out of fear of the privileged status now attached to the tantrum, refuses to call out its irrationality and instead attempts to rationalize it, is only pretending with the one out of control that there may be a point here after all.

Such an advocate deservedly wins, not the spoiled one’s respect, but his deepest ire. The spoiled one knows he is being used not loved.

Islam enters this problem almost like a refreshing breeze. It tells the spoiled one exactly what it thinks of his gross carrying on. It tells him in no uncertain terms that such vile behavior will not be countenanced and, most importantly, it folllows through.

That, in so doing, it conflates the outrageous demands with the one so demanding and cuts off the behavior by cutting off the spoiled one’s head, does not offend. The temper tantrum was a cry for correction and even a perversion of correction, mistakenly given, is better than a heartless response of indulgence born of indifference and cold calculated self-interest.

Watch Helen Keller sometime. Helen was a spoiled brat whose parents love for her was eclipsed by their despairing pity for her condition. Her teacher, Annie Sullivan,entered the parentally created crisis to meet a child supremely spoiled through the neglect of discipline. Teacher Sullivan applied the wisdom of the West’s marriage of faith and reason to Helen’s case: she refused to treat Helen as less than human as her parents had done through equating physical blindness with intellectual blindness. She held Helen responsible for her actions.

Those who publically attempt to handle the problem of Islam arriving at our door by manipulative,appeasing appeals to a well- heeled, raging homosexual lobby, need to remember that, in taking that irrational approach, they only reinforce the irrationality and merit the contempt of the one whom they would so use.

After Orlando, a number of ACT-UP veterans who often celebrated their anti-Catholic activities in the late 1980s and 1990s, made it a point to speak ever so cautiously about Islam and, of course, condemn Islamophobia.

None of the ACT-UP veterans live in fear of being murdered by Opus Dei agents or Catholic conservatives. By contrast, that newspaper cartoonist who created “Every One Draw Muhammad Day,” to champion free (and offensive) speech was forced (with the encouragement of the FBI) to leave her job, change her name, and go into hiding because her life was in danger.

In many ways then, the controversies surrounding radical Islam and mass migration at their core come down to differing understandings of reality, one that is either centered on daily experiences of living or one based on abstract thought experiments.

1) In terms of diversity supporters, California supports more immigration because more citizens know and interact with immigrants. (Yes there is signaling stuff) Also Immigrants or 1st generation tend to like more people like them.
2) There is conflicting groups here that 20 –
30 years ago that most ‘good’ Americans looked down upon.
3) It is reasonable to discuss treatment of gays in Muslim states but there is little our government or private citizens can do here. It seems reasonable to note Muslim communities in the US don’t act in same way. (Yes there are exceptions.)

The other poster-banning story that Michael Aaron links to – “Last fall, the university also refused to allow the DePaul College Republicans from posting [sic] ‘Unborn Lives Matter’ posters as well” — was reported in depth by “National Review.” The article – “Catholic university bans ‘Unborn Lives Matter’ posters” — deserves a careful reading.

American Conservative should not have published this deceitful piece. As pointed out above, that poster was not banned by DePaul due to complaints by advocates of Muslims’ interests, but in response to alleged concerns that it served to bait the Black Lives Matter movement. Beyond that, James Kirchick is by no means a “leading gay activist,” as Aaron describes him, but a neocon propagandist and mischief-maker employed by Kristol, Kagan and Senor’s Foreign Policy Initiative think-tank. ‘Gay Lives Matter’ and Kirchick’s announced speech amount to a scheme to contrive a supposed SJW protest that can be exploited to the advantage of the worst warmongering pseudo-conservatives in US politics.

From this layman’s point of view the Jews, Islamists, Queers, Blacks and Feminists are only united by their mutual hatred of straight, white, Christian men. This alliance lacks solidarity. These groups have no love for one another as this article points out. Hopefully we reached peak identity politics in the recent election.

It’s worth remembering that the homosexual community not 40 years ago perpetuated a self-inflicted holocaust on itself through licentious and unfettered sexual promiscuity, and found a way to blame Ronald Reagan and “intolerance” for it.

In other words, modern history already has one very stark example of the organized homosexual community not being able to recognize and respond effectively to a serious, lethal threat; and in fact of finding socially and politically acceptable scapegoats to pin responsibility upon (in the same way the Orlando Pulse nightclub massacre of last year was blamed on generalized “homophobia,” rather than the obvious Islamic motives the perpetrator claimed).

Let me see if I get this right. Someone supporting a same relational lifestyle wanted to speak about muslims abusing people who engage in the same.

But he wanted to do it on what was once a premier Catholic institution.

Laughing.

You have got to be kidding. That’s what’s bizarre. That Catholics have so abandoned their faith that they would even consider such an ethic. Had he just wanted to protest that Muslims in some corners do like to behead people to some revolutionary cause, I might consider the effort.

Abusing people is not Catholic ethic I am aware. Even if they engage in behaviors that Christ himself would condemn. Seems wisdom would have demanded the case be made for no abuse- period.

If you start with some foundation principles about the purpose of being a human being and that purpose includes then these,

“How is homosexuality irrational? Further, how does rationality correlate to the morality of a thing?”

are fairly easy to answer. But if you come a foundation that is devoid of those foundations your questions have some merit. But in my foundation understanding of human being and human purpose. The behavior is not irrational an immoral, advocate it long enough and you be unable to return to anything akin to a rational or moral understanding.

But first, one has to understanding the foundation. For those who follow Christ and the Christ as understood in scripture, homosexuality is not only untenable, retrograde or entropic.

The problem here is that people engaged in behaviors that are forbidden by the group to which they desire to belong is a nonstarter. You either have to find some other place fight for change or start your own things. It’s a safe bet that among social constructs, you are unlikely to get more than words of rejection these days and among most groups. But the Muslim community has a strong tradition of taking action to ensure obedience and conformity. Those who choose to act not in accordance with the belief system might suffer more than a few choice words and expulsion. But then those are choices.

But a Catholic University that allows its students to engage in bullying speech is hardly part of Christ’s teaching and said students should have been roundly disciplined.

The refusal by Students for Justice in Palestine to recognize the murderous behavior of certain Muslim governments toward gays is disgusting, though not surprising. Like so many of their activist brethren, they show that hatred of Western liberal society is the sole glue that binds them together, and they will ally with anyone that they hope can harm that society.

But I’m no more impressed by this: “Bringing in more people from a homophobic culture into the West changes the culture.” Why do so many assume that when homophobic culture meets tolerant culture, homophobic culture will inevitably prevail? That Muslims who come to the West will prove somehow immune to the thirst for freedom that has lured so many Christians away from their churches’ traditional condemnation of homosexuality?

I can tell you for sure, radical Muslims have no such illusions. They know for darn sure that Western liberalism can and will seduce and attract Muslims into joining it. That’s why the Saudi Wahhabists order Muslims never to immigrate to Western countries, nor even visit the West longer than the bare minimum necessary; because they know the vast majority of their people would never stick with their backward, repressive version of Islam if they understood that they had a choice. It’s strange that Islamic radicals often have a better understanding of Western culture’s power and allure than the West’s self-styled defenders do.

I guess I don’t know what you mean by radical Islam when you discuss people defending it. If you mean Islam as the radix of society, then I would point out that many Islamic societies are more pluralistic than Western societies, and that given that there is no central authority, Islam ends up being remarkably local, democratic, and organic, perhaps better than the Western Liberal order that traces back to Locke and Hobbes.

But if you mean the Salafis who are unwilling to share the planet with anyone else…. Not only can they not be defended, but I doubt they can defend themselves. After all Islamic Anarchism strikes me as much an oxymoron as any out there. Sooner or later they will have to reinvent sanity in order to survive (much like the libertarians with whom they share a basic concept of individualism). So, we should let them fail.

As far as changing our culture though, here you miss the basic problem in the West today. Liberalism since Hobbes and Locke has sought to liberate people from culture. The idea that immigrants will change our culture then is not a bad thing, in this spirit of mutual liberation. We will liberate them from their errors and they will liberate us from ours until we are perfect autonomous, enlightened agents without culture or heritage. That’s the mythology that these arguments run up against, anyway.

A revolution has to start with valuing culture, even culture we disagree with. To this end it is important to accept that we will disagree but that we use space and separate governance to manage that disagreement. Different communities should be able to exercise self-determination in deciding what family structures, economic structures, and governmental structures they want to try to make work, and globalism does not cease to be evil just because we pretend it is in the name of human rights.

I have to admit that I’ve ceased to be amazed by anything that the left (even the “moderate” left, such as the Obama Administration) does anymore. It all unwound for me the day last year when it was declared that a trans girl with penis, testicles, and scrotum was allowed to shower in the girls’ locker room, no matter how many young lasses were uncomfortable.

It is ironic how, in the name of protecting victims from alleged oppressors, the cultural Marxist Left has been trying to enforce a fantasy world in which alleged oppressors have all the moral agency and alleged victims are merely helpless babes or retarded children who cannot be held responsible for their actions.

This apparent conflict arises because of the mistaken idea that the use of the term “radical” indemnifies against accusations of defaming the overwhelming numbers of Muslims who abhor and avoid violence of any kind, much less participate in religio-political terror groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda.

The word “radical” does no such linguistic heavy lifting. Sufism, for example, is a “radical” form of Islam that largely eschews violence, aggression or outward poltical expression of any sort.

What “Social Justice Warriors” are decrying is attempts to tar all Muslims with the same brush, including their friends, fellow students, professors, family members and others.

You mention Chechnya, and believe you were criticized unjustly for focusing on Islam as a source of the “gay purge” in that troubled country. In light of the way gays are treated in neighboring Christian/secularist Russia, and the fact that the purge is largely being laid at the feet of Kremlin-backed Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, your focus on Islam in this regard seems fetishist at best, jingoistic at worst.

Those gay individuals speaking out against radical Islam, while outraged about human rights abuses abroad, are also motivated by self-preservation. A key thesis of their argument is that bringing in more people from a homophobic culture into the West changes the culture.

Pretty slick, there, how you went from “radical Islam” to the whole of Islam being dangerous as a “homophobic culture.”

Well, shall we agree then that all Christian immigrants should likewise be barred as bringing a “homophobic culture” with them?

What you call unsupported assertions, what used to be called question-begging (now mistakenly thought to be synonymous with question raising) are actually self-evident truths not so much in evidence anymore, if your questions be sincere, because of the suppression of facts surrounding the promotion of perversity. It is possible, owing to the suppression, that, like prenatal infanticide, a person might not even know in what a homosexual act consists. To your questions, therefore:

“How is homosexuality irrational?”

The anus is an organ of evacuation not consummation, therefore, we know that the anus is not a sex organ. Homosexual activity treats the anus as a sex organ and therefore act irrationally.

“How does rationality correlate to the morality of a thing?”

In this way: rationality pertains to what a man knows; morality pertains to iwhat a man does. An action is moral when it is in harmony with what a thing is, it’s essence ( is-ness) rationally derived.

The rich like money. The easiest way for the rich to get more money, is to drive wages down. Making money competing with Apple and Toyota is hard; making money replacing $20/hour labor with $2/hour labor is easy.

And the easiest way by far to drive wages down is to rapidly increase the supply of workers. And because reactionary Islam produces the greatest masses of desperately poor people, the importation of Muslim refugees offers the greatest profit potential. I mean, you won’t find many desperate people with no choice but to work for sub-poverty wages in Japan or South Korea or increasingly even China and Russia…

Scoff if you will, but the rich are enamored of cheap labor and will often go to extreme lengths to get it. Remember how the American South fought a bloody civil war to preserve the low labor costs of slavery?

Islamic refugees make the right people money today. Therefore anyone pointing out the bad aspects of modern Islam is a racist. Because a racist is someone saying something that the elites don’t want said. And if someday it doesn’t work out, well, the right people can just take their profits and sail away on their yachts. Don’t expect an apology.

“From this layman’s point of view the Jews, Islamists, Queers, Blacks and Feminists are only united by their mutual hatred of straight, white, Christian men.”

I have seen this called “the Coalition of the Fringes”. But as to lacking solidarity, I would point to how, in one examplte, Temüjin, the Çingis hán, united a bunch of fractious Mongol tribes, divided by countless feuds old and new, into a mighty empire by providing a common enemy to attack… and to plunder for loot, of course. Draw the parallels to your situation as you will, but I don’t think you are anywhere near “peak identity politics” — there’s still too many “straight, white, Christian men” to attack, with plenty of wealth to “loot”.

“Why do so many assume that when homophobic culture meets tolerant culture, homophobic culture will inevitably prevail? That Muslims who come to the West will prove somehow immune to the thirst for freedom that has lured so many Christians away from their churches’ traditional condemnation of homosexuality?”

Because “tolerant culture” is an offshoot from or outgrowth of Western Christianity, making Christians more vulnerable to it than others? And experience?

“Liberalism since Hobbes and Locke has sought to liberate people from culture. The idea that immigrants will change our culture then is not a bad thing, in this spirit of mutual liberation. We will liberate them from their errors and they will liberate us from ours until we are perfect autonomous, enlightened agents without culture or heritage. That’s the mythology that these arguments run up against, anyway.”

And mythology it is, because human beings are not “autonomous agents”, but born into specific families, with associated social ties and obligations, in particular times and places and circumstances, with specific cultures and heritages, all of which are at least particularly constitutive of a person’s basic identity. This is why some call Rawls’s “veil of ignorance” idea “Gnostic”, because a person without a family, a nation, an ethnicity, without sex or age, without any position relative to other human beings, is an entity without much of what makes “personality”, and can’t really be called a “person” at all, but is instead a sort of abstract intellect, something like a “soul” — but even less — upon which personhood, identity, and the circumstances of birth that form these is then “inflicted”.

“Different communities should be able to exercise self-determination in deciding what family structures, economic structures, and governmental structures they want to try to make work”

But, your “liberal” opponent might argue, those communities might “self-determine” to try “family structures, economic structures, and governmental structures” that violate the inalienable, universal human rights of some members of that community. If you allow different peoples “go their own way”, then they might commit evils like, say, keeping people in servitude based on skin color, or let husbands beat their wives, or deny that “spousal rape” is a thing, or kill homosexuals, or deny some adult citizens the vote, or whatever. And “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”, and to tolerate evil any place where you could stop or prevent it is itself evil, no? You are your “brother’s keeper”, and if you have the One True Faith for all people everywhere, is it not your duty to “save souls” by spreading it to as many people everywhere as possible, “for their own good”?

Being naive and financially pampered maybe a reason why LGBT rich kids are political conformists, but economic uncertainty is just as likely to be a factor for those from less affluent backgrounds. Urban rents are historically very high, the graduate job market is very competitive, and wages are stagnating for most workers without advanced STEM qualifications. Hence many LGBTs from middle and working class backgrounds are likely to keep quiet because they don’t want to lose their jobs and become unemployable.

Hey maybe the GOP could win over the whole LGB block if they adopted equal marriage rights, gay adoption, and discrimination protection into their platform.

I didn’t vote democrat this election simply because I did not want a bunch of Muslim refugees entering the country. That being said, if the refugee crisis is over by 2018 or 2020 I will be voting democrat again.

Sorry Muslims are worse than the religious right but if there are no Muslims in the picture the religious right goes right back to being enemy No. 1.